About Me

Father and grand father, married to Sandra, who is partially disabled. We have two rescued dogs, Sophie and Kip who we treat as kids. Now that I am retired I try to do a bit of freelance writing, the hardest part is getting it published! The on-line stuff I do is published on 'Triond' (link on left).

Friday, 24 July 2009

Swine Flu? Why Not Call A Welder

The Government's National Flu Service website, which is designed to give suspected swine flu sufferers access to anti-viral drugs without pestering their doctor, crashed immediately after being launched yesterday afternoon.

Due to the sheer volume of hits, the site was down for more than two hours. Visitors to the site were greeted with a message which read, "The service is currently very busy and cannot deal with your request at this time. Please try again in a little while."

How authentic is that? Just like phoning a real GP’s surgery on a normal day!

The trouble is, this call centre/chat room is not a real doctors surgery and the person you are consulting is not a real doctor.

If you contact this hot line you are more than likely to be diagnosed by an out of work welder than someone with a medical background. The staff have had only six hours training to do this job.

There are thousands of doctors that have graduated in the past few years that haven’t found a placement, why not draft these in to man the phones and keyboards?

There has already been at least one case of misdiagnosis, where a young woman’s GP, yes GP, not welder, diagnosed swine flu when in fact she was actually suffering from meningitis!

When you add the potential deaths from wrongly diagnosed swine flu to the fatalities in the Afghan War, Gordon Brown suddenly dons the cloak of the Grim Reaper!